Saturday, December 19, 2015

Donald Trump's conception of his own campaign has entered its third distinct phase.

The first phase was about receiving publicity, allegedly in front of an investment deal. Say some things that resonate with a large number of people that aren't otherwise being said, give attention to what needs attending to while simultaneously raising the personal profile.

Trump entered the second phase sometime after the first Republican presidential debate in early August. He decided he was in it to win and made the requisite ground game acquisitions with celerity.

The fifth debate made clear that he has now entered a third phase, one characterized by his confidence that he is going to win the GOP nomination.

In standard Trumpian fashion, he's check-mated the GOP establishment. They didn't want him stealing votes as an independent when they naively believed he didn't stand a chance of getting the Republican nomination. Now that he's going to get it, they're desperate for him to run as an independent. It'd be a lot more difficult for him to win the general election that way, and many of the puppet masters would rather see Hillary Clinton elected than see Trump win. The party tried to ambush him, but Trump's ambuscade was already lying in wait for them. Once again he has outmaneuvered the entire party establishment.

Another sure sign is apparent in the way Trump is now extending his hand to potential allies, and not just Cruz (start at 3:39 in the video), but also others farther down the pecking order. He explicitly made it known that he watched the undercard debate (relevant video queued at the link). This isn't in keeping with his generally dismissive attitude towards the ankle biters bumping around at the bottom, but it was quite purposeful here. Trump is sending a clear message that he is watching, and those who are prudent enough to aid him as he consolidates support and wraps the nomination up quickly will find their loyalty rewarded. For those who aren't, well, it's off the dais for them.

Since I'm assuming the role of epigone (though let the record show a Trump/Cruz ticket was predicted here several months ago!), allow me to allay my own fears with the most recent polling data. In early August, when the Trump phenomenon was in its seminal stages, I wrote:

I don't think Trump's going to win the GOP nomination. If he manages to stand against the entire Establishment (really, all the opinion-making organs of society are against him--both political parties, the major media, big business, etc) through multiple debates where traps will continue to be set exclusively for him, what'll end up happening is that as the other ~16 GOP contenders drop out of the race one by one, they'll all start throwing their support behind one of the non-Trump candidates still in, so that it'll eventually just be Trump vs top Establishment candidate and most of the ~75% of Republican voters who are spread out across non-Trump candidates right now will come together against him.

Post-debate polling from PPP, I'm happy to report, suggests I had been excessively pessimistic*. The survey asked Republican primary participants how they'd vote in hypothetical head-to-head contests for the GOP nomination. In these sceanrios Trump crushes Bush 58%-34%, crushes Carson 57%-34%, and crushes Rubio 54%-38%. Only Cruz gives Trump a run for his money, with Trump leading the Texas senator by a single point, 45%-44%.

This is yet still more terrible news for the Republican establishment. A solid majority of Republican voters now say they would back Trump over any of the establishment-approved marionettes.

* Parenthetically, to put this thread in context, I was pointing to how successful Trump's early campaign had been up to that point and how I didn't think it was going away anytime soon in the face of a chorus of people who dismissed it as a circus that would be over as quickly as it had started.

The phrase "Trump phenomenon" really is a fitting one. It's easy to forget that mere months ago no one with a megaphone thought Trump had a shot in hell.

This is yet still more terrible news for the Republican establishment. A solid majority of Republican voters now say they would back Trump over any of the establishment-approved marionettes.

Liberals play for keeps. Two international stories. First from Slovenia:

But MPs from the United Left party, which initially proposed the change in the law, said the result was a temporary setback.

"It's not over yet. Sooner or later the law will be accepted," said United Left MP Violeta Tomic.

When liberals lose, it's only temporary but when conservatives lose, that's definite.

From Canada - Liberals are undoing many Conservative advances, such as raising the retirement age in order to address pension fund viability, restricting health care for refugees, not permitting the niqab at citizenship ceremonies, and others.

This is what we, and Trump, face - unrelenting warfare from people intent on destroying society. Trump stated that he merely wanted to temporarily halt Muslims from entering the US. That's warm piss. A liberal faced with a policy or fact that he didn't like would roll it back, would destroy it, not just stop the irritant for a while and then let it continue anew.

I recall some analysis about the McCain defeat where those in the campaign mentioned that Palin wanted to be sent out as an attack dog but McCain nixed that plan because he didn't want to be seen as racist for going full-bore against Obama, in short, it was more important for McCain to be seen as anti-racist than to win the Presidency and this where racism is defined as being aggressive against a black man, not, you know, actually being racist.

What Trump needs to do is roll-back liberal demographic advances and that's going to be a dirty fight and I'm not sure he's willing to take on that fight, even with weak symbolic arguments like offering refugee status to South African whites who live in a country where violence against whites is at dangerous levels. That wouldn't solve our demographic problems but the symbolism would be powerful and the usual suspects would go apeshit in their reaction.

A lot of Trump supporters see the problems but I'm not sure how many can develop a cause-effect model which explains why these problems exist. Deporting infiltrators simply because they're here illegally and then allowing them back in through legal channels doesn't solve any problem. Does Trump get that? I don't know.

Trump needs to deport millions upon millions. Then he needs to wean Americans dependent on disability welfare off that welfare and back into the labor market. He needs to revoke Green Cards for those on welfare and deport them. He needs to revise tax policies so that white middle class people start having more children and lower class people start having fewer, which means that incentives have to increase as we go up the income ladder - a baby bonus of $X is going to be less effective at higher income levels. He needs to gut civil rights and EEOC enforcement divisions, gut disparate impact legal theory, institute civil service exams for existing civil servants and fire those who fail. All of this is going to stir up mass resistance but this is what you need to correct course. Liberals seem to have no problem with reversing conservative advances but conservatives are weak when in power.

Go Trump Go, but for God's sakes, do what it takes to actually fix problems.

That doesn't dispute the thrust of what's being described here. To the contrary, it lends credence to it. Adelson, a puppet master, has no love for someone who can't be controlled like Trump. Presumably Trump made clear to Adelson that he is going to win the GOP nomination, and even though Adelson is cool towards Trump, Trump communicated to Adelson that if he doesn't actively oppose Trump, Trump won't shut him out down the road. He's like Julius Caesar. He's won the civil war and now he's offering clemency to his previous foes if they get in line.

VXXC,

The nature of the Iowa caucuses, with the hours of pre-vote speeches in public places, assures low turnout. If Trump doesn't win the state, and I suspect he won't, the mainstream story for a week will be that Trump's poll numbers are inflated, his supporters don't actually show up to vote, etc etc. That faux narrative will last until New Hampshire, when Trump wins a landslide. Then he'll win South Carolina in similar fashion and the question will be how fast do others start dropping out to make it Trump v Cruz. The sooner that happens, the more difficult Trump's task will be, but he has the inside track.

Tangoman,

Trump claims to have read Ann Coulter's Adios America and has called it a "great read". Presuming this is true, it's reasonable to assume that he does get it.

I've read the book, and it unapologetically ridicules virtually all sources of contemporary immigration into the US, both legal and illegal, and she accuses the establishment (both political parties, big business, the media, academia, etc) of desiring to demographically replace America's middle class white population with subservient brown peasants several times. It's not like reading what I imagine a milquetoast book from someone like Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly to be like. She is explicit. Nothing in the entire book would be out of place at VDare.com, and that's not an exaggeration on my part.

That looks like it checks out as legitimate. I haven't been paying close attention (obviously), but I thought the online betting market had been shuttered by legal fiat since the 2012 election. I will put my money where my mouth is on this one, thanks.

"He needs to revise tax policies so that white middle class people start having more children and lower class people start having fewer, which means that incentives have to increase as we go up the income ladder - a baby bonus of $X is going to be less effective at higher income levels. "

I've often thought a sneaky loophole would be this.

Women working is what causes lower fertility. Women entering the workplace has lowered wages due to increased labour supply which means women now have to work because their husbands can't pull in enough for a high income household. Increasing the labour supply and decreasing wages is why Capital supported feminism in the first place. How can we fix this and run a ring around both feminists and capital?

A famous feminist once said that women can't be allowed the option to be stay at home mothers because women will all choose that. No majority of women would want to work when she can stay home and tend to the children. So, why not have a maternity leave scheme lasting 2 years, or 2 years and 9 months? Such a scheme would be mandatory for all corporations earning say more than a million profits a year but it would be made optional for both women and men to pursue (such a paternity leave scheme would possible be necessary for men to prevent accusations of sexism but it need not be. Feminists are only ever concerned with negative discrimination against women not positive discrimination for men). Such a scheme would allow women to stay home and pursue a livelihood of having children permanently. It would raise birth rates, and since the funding of it would be by successful companies it would de facto exclude the underclass. Furthermore the wages that were skimmed off men's income due to women entering the market and inflating the labour supply will instead be taken out of the hands of capital and returned to the family, thus increasing the affordability of having children. The only problem I could see with i would be it would allow single motherhood amongst the middle class to grow unchecked. Perhaps require the the receipt of such a scheme can only go to married couples?

Or take the argument of economic efficiency. It is most economically efficient if only one person in the couple is allowed to take the scheme as it is only necessary for one of the parents to stay home, ergo the scheme should be limited to one couple per household.

Maternity leave is a governmental intervention in the marketplace which leads to inefficiency.

I favor income splitting and allowing parents to split income with their children for 20 years. Someone earning $40,000 per year in a family of 4 would result in 4 people, 2 parents and 2 children, each having a taxable income of $10,000 and they would be taxed at a low rate. Someone earning $200,000 per year with 4 people in the family would have each of them taxed at $50,000 per year, at a rate far less than that applied to one income at $200,000 or 2 incomes at $100,000. Now, when they have an additional child that $200,000 gets divided into 5 incomes of $40,000. This scheme depends on having a more graduated tax rate ladder and a rebalancing of taxes and welfare programs.

What falls out is that the higher up you go in income the greater the incentive to the family to have an additional kid. The low income family doesn't get that big of an incentive to have another kid.

Life in America today has parents privately paying the costs of raising children and the principal financial benefits produced are captured by society, so kids become emotional goods for parents or luxury goods - some parents want more kids but it costs too much to raise them so they limit themselves.

Maybe we incorporate thresholds in the scheme, so that DINKS can't income split, maybe this doesn't kick until until your 1st or 2nd kid and then it applies to both parents and kids.

The glaring fact here is that rich people can afford to raise kids without requiring as much social subsidy and poor people need more social subsidy, so better to have rich and middle class people raise more kids and poor people raising fewer.

Whichever scheme is chosen it has to account for the fact that incentives need to matched to different income and demographic groups and we want to encourage eugenic policies not dysgenic ones.

Maternity leave like the kind mandated by FMLA or mandatory compensated leave? If the former, it's a hard sell for me because I deal with FMLA firsthand on a regular basis and it is a nightmare. If the latter, unofficial retribution would be a consequence for those who made use of it. That could be a feature rather than a bug, though.

It is worth pointing out that even in 21st century America, the fast majority of people--leftists included--think that a male breadwinner-female homemaker is the ideal environment for children to be raised in.

It is worth pointing out that even in 21st century America, the fast majority of people--leftists included--think that a male breadwinner-female homemaker is the ideal environment for children to be raised in.

Ms. Carvey found refuge from that panic in the manner of any driven Type-A professional: She made a list of the pros and cons of staying home. The pros won out, and she became part of an enigmatic exodus in Alberta.

The working women of the province are disappearing, just as the province's superheated economy is becoming increasingly short-handed. Unemployment has fallen to unimaginably low levels, and help-wanted signs plaster the windows of retail businesses throughout the province. Businesses are scouring Alberta, indeed the entire country, for workers, going so far as to launch recruiting drives in prisons.

And while that desperate search goes on, women such as Ms. Carvey are turning away from work to become not-so-desperate housewives. Ten years ago, Alberta had nearly the highest proportion of working women (or women looking for work) with daycare-age children and a spouse, second only to Prince Edward Island.

In the ensuing decade, those numbers changed dramatically as large numbers of working mothers moved into the work force. Quebec, close to the bottom of the pack, rose to near the top, a change largely coinciding with its introduction of inexpensive and near-universal daycare. But the change was not limited to Quebec: Every Canadian province saw substantial increases in the number of working women with children under 6.

In every province, that is, except Alberta, where that number has been declining steadily this decade. Ten years ago, nearly seven in 10 women in this group were working, or looking for work -- above the national average. Now, it's closer to six in 10, and well below the nationwide average. Statistics Canada has documented this decline, but doesn't have a definitive explanation for it. Differences in daycare -- Alberta has among the lowest public funding in the country -- are likely part of the explanation. The introduction of a flat tax rate and a doubling of spousal deductions in 2001 certainly eased the financial burden on single-income families. . . . .

The rising wealth of Alberta could be enabling some women to stay at home without undue financial hardship. "Wages have been increasing quite rapidly," he said. "Is it possible you only need one person working?"

That hypothesis certainly lines up with Ms. Carvey's experience. Ms. Carvey and her husband, Darby Parker, had the relatively unusual luxury of being free from the financial worries of moving to a single income. Her salary of $70,000, while substantial, was lower than the six-figure compensation her spouse brought home from his oil-patch job. With a small mortgage, a modest home and a six-year-old car, the couple had avoided an overhang of debt.

Positive feedback loops - wages increases, some married men can now support their family on one income, the working wife exits the labor force, thus increasing labor scarcity and pushing wage levels higher, enabling another man on the margin to support his family on one income and leading his wife to exit the labor force.

This also works in the reverse - women enter the labor force so that they can afford the lifestyle they want thus depressing everyone's wages, therein lowering a married man's wages and forcing his wife to seek a job, thereby putting downward pressure on wages, and so on.

We've all understood the 2nd model but many assumed that the Alberta experience couldn't happen because women valued added income more than focusing on being mothers. In the posted example that woman gave up an income of $70,000 per year (Canadian though, so like $5 US) in order to stay home with the kids.